TIPOS DE JUEGOS DRAMÁTICOS

In the breath training in Berkeley Jürg Roffler often began sessions with an invitation to ‘let yourself be carried’. Middendorf writes about ‘being carried’,

Whenever you are lying on the floor (on your back, your stomach, on your right side or left side), you should let yourself be carried. If you do

this, your entire body will become living, breathing, warm. You feel secure … This will not happen if you flop on the floor. You then become heavy and the breathing movement will withdraw itself below the breast bone and the rest of the body will be hardly perceptible (1990, 129, italics in original).

It was with this in mind on the second day that I offered a ‘sequence’ of lying on the floor, contrasting the idea of ‘being carried by the floor’ with that of ‘sinking into the floor’. The proposition that having one idea or other in mind while performing an action could affect the experience that follows is reminiscent of the grounds of ideokinesis, which I look at in some detail below (p.130ff). It suggests an indivisibility of body and mind, their inseparability, which is an important theme in this thesis. My body is organised in ways that run beneath my immediate conscious control. (I need only think of the many homeostatic mechanisms in my body, which I cannot and would not want to control.) Middendorf

proposes in the citation above that if I have the idea of ‘being carried’ in my mind, my experience will be different from, richer than, if I just let myself flop.

In Berkeley this notion of being carried is extended to include sitting and standing. At the start of a beginners class Roffler introduces this idea, saying something like, ‘let yourself be carried; sense the stool coming up to meet your sitzbones [he uses this German expression],

and the floor rising up to meet your feet’. By using such imagery he subverts or eludes the possibility of ‘sinking down’. The ground rises to meet me, so I do not have to sink. I can rest and be carried. He

suggests that this ‘being carried’ connects with ‘allowing’ breath to come and go on its own, and that both require a basic trust (in one’s body, and, by extension, in the world).

I asked people to lie down, to sense where their bodies met the floor, and to imagine the floor rising up to meet them and carry them. After a while I asked them to imagine sinking into the floor and to notice what difference this made to their experience, and later come back to being carried. Then I invited them to keep the idea of being carried as they came to sitting on their stools. Here are some responses:

Being carried by the floor – Allowed my breath to flow harmoniously – like a pendulum swinging. Balance between the inner and outer breath. Sinking into the floor – my body again wanted to spend more time in the outer breath. Concave feeling – continuation of the sinking – funny sensation of feeling a freedom. Back to being carried – Expansion. Being more active in the breath inwards my body felt like it was projected forward. The breath in allows me to connect with the outer. While getting up to my stool – Sense of presence – present in my fingers which are reaching, picking up the stool. Sense of inner stillness – yet the pendulum extends out into the world – (picking up the stool) – then connects with the inner – my wonderful sense of harmony. Makes me aware of my shoulders which are not readily receiving my breath (DT 2 May 04).

Being carried – emotional meaning – people carried/carrying me ~ my breath hesitant ~ stop start breath

Sinking into floor ~ going to sleep/oblivion total relaxation with no awareness (MA 2 May 04)

Being carried – my heels most easily experienced & calves resisted the invitation. Breath light, fine, thin.

Sinking – I felt heavier, it is a ‘grosser’ instruction. Breath is thick, heavier, shorter.

Sitting on chair – ‘My arms know what to do’. Gorgeous sensation, that the arms are at ease, without a job description or action to perform. This seems to be related to the comfort of the breath, its ease, but I’m not exactly sure what that is specifically (BC 2 May 04).

For a long while I thought of the comfort or ease of my breath in terms of whether or not I was doing something muscular in my body that might be restricting the movement of breath. Now I recognise that this is oversimplified, that thoughts and emotions play a part too.

Sometimes I experience things the other way around – I find ease in my breath that seems to allow for or create ease in my body.

Being ‘carried’ – I react with some discomfort to the idea, but feel a breath awareness spread from my skin in touch with the mat, to & thru the back of my body. ‘Sinking’ feels more allowable and familiar, and seems to encourage a deeper, slower breath. I move to sitting & have a strange experience of shrinking – I feel that I’ve become quite small, particularly from the waist up – my head feels tiny (LC 2 May 04).

Notion of being carried deepened my breath. Releasing on the out breath. Sinking beneath I felt like I went to a dark place that I was part of the dark place (landscape). Matter merging. On returning to the surface the notion of being carried felt like a deep sadness (deep … sort of muscular deep … fundamental … um). Breath felt connected and (profound?) as I got back on the stool. I then experience a ‘shimmering’. Sort of like my central nervous system was releasing or expressing something (OP 2 May 04).

This piece from OP speaks of the depth and complexity of some of people’s experiences in the workshops, and the difficulty of finding the words to adequately match the experience, which in this case seems to be of some fundamental change.

Being carried gave me an awareness of the vertical breath movement & a clear perception of the alignment of my body especially the hips. My body in and out of alignment.

Sinking into the ground seemed to take the breath movement into a horizontal direction. Also the presence & awareness of back was stronger. Carried presence more centred in body. Sinking presence more in back (FL 2 May 04).

FL’s ‘breath awareness’ is clear in the way she distinguishes between the vertical and horizontal direction of breath movement and her awareness of ‘presence’.

There are certainly different experiences reported for ‘being carried’ and ‘sinking into’. My proposal of ‘sinking into’, which some people are familiar with, is different from Middendorf’s description of ‘flopping’. A number of responses note a tendency to sink into unconsciousness with ‘sinking into’. The invitation to ‘be carried’ does seem to encourage a bodily organization that provides for more ease. I find this in my own practice. If I can let myself be carried then I find it much easier to bring all of my attention, my presence, to perceiving the movement of breath.